Dystopic Fantasy: Magic and the Human Will

In my post-Revenant world, I want to build up some assumptions about a genre I would like to create called dystopic fantasy. I want to take your typical MMO-flavored pap of traditional high-fantasy pen-and-paper games and turn them on their head.

Now I know I could just play a realistic game, such as Warhammer Fantasy or Legend and get my dystopic fill, but I wanted to try to search for some better rules of the road for the genre, in particular, rules regarding character power and character creation. Some of my thoughts are as follows:

• Magic and special powers should never eclipse the power of a human's will

That one is important, because too often you will start out with a great dystopian feel, and all of a sudden someone introduces a fireball or teleport spell and the high-fantasy power creep comes into the game. It's over at that point, the door is open, and the game gets taken over with lightning bolt flinging mages casting shield spells while using crystal balls with ESP to target enemies. I don't want "do it all" magic, and the power of a single man's will should be the ultimate power in the game.

Warhammer Fantasy has high magic spells (at least the last edition I bought), some of the standard tropes of high-fantasy crowd-pleasing RPGs are in there, like your fireballs and other tropes. Sometimes a game will come along and say "there is a high cost to magic" and use that as a sort of excuse to put in the high-fantasy trope spells, but in my experience, those "high costs to magic" usually get worked around or ignored unless you have a really strict and unpopular referee.

But the fact super-power spells exist take away the golden rule, a human's will and personal strength should be the ultimate power in the game. Magic can exist, and preferably it should be this strange and unexplainable force, never to be min-max'ed or gamed as a source of power. It can't become a "character building" piece, or something to factor into DPS. It can't. It sucks when it falls into the MMO model, reliable and predictable, and then the slippery slope starts and the game becomes about magic instead of about a deadly, realistic, and darkly themed world.

If there is a goal out there in the wilderness, putting on your mud-caked hiking boots and setting out on an expedition of dozens of men should be the path you take. You may not make it, but summoning up a flying carpet, teleporting, shape-changing into a bear, or summoning a pack of elk to ride on should not be an option.

Think of magic in dystopic fantasy as the "curse" cast upon Hugh Glass in the movie Revenant. The bear spirit, Indians, land, or something out there cursed him to die. To break this curse he needed to undergo many trials, and his sheer force of will and ability to cling to life broke that spell upon him, and allowed him to enact revenge. But breaking that curse had a price, and that price was revenge by his hand in the end. That is how magic should feel, this strange, unexplainable, almost Lovecraftian force that shapes nature, fate, death, and fate by a capricious, alien force of uncaring will.

To predict magic would be like trying to predict fate and nature itself.

You can't rule it with a paragraph about "magic missile" nor control it in any way.

But why would you? It would, ultimately, be cheating life and the human will and an easy way out. Controlling magic would also be like trying to tame that bear in the movie, and it would probably kill you at best. I don't want "Marvel Superheroes - the High Fantasy RPG the MMO" I want something that has that black and deadly feel, something deadly, and something where one man's actions can matter. A potion of healing and a magic wand just can't help you here, and it is that heroic and gut feeling of mastery, willpower, and skill that makes a hero...a hero.

Revenant, RPGs, and Heroism

A beautiful movie. When it comes to RPGs, especially high-magic and high-fantasy, it leaves me wondering. I like realism. I like the grim and gritty. I dislike the entitlement and empowerment of the current crop of pen-and-paper RPGs, where characters feel like they are some superhero in the middle of an overused CG Matrix-style 360 slow-motion shot where everyone is fighting and using cool powers like of out of some 2010's era Avengers movie.

It makes me want to go back to Mongoose's Legend, frankly.

While I like my escapism and fantasy tropes, it all feels so mixed up. World of Warcraft meets MMOs meets D&D meets Pathfinder and it all becomes some high-magic joke where mages walk all over the story with infinite cast fire-blast magic, solve everything divination spells, character builds, max-ing DPS, and nothing feels like it is taken seriously any more. That essential quality of a hero sacrificing is lost to min-maxing and magic so prevalent and powerful you could never do a Revenant style story. Not in a million years with a high-fantasy game.

"Let's level to the point where we get the spells to solve this," is what I hear from players.

Granted, low-magic survival and gritty roleplay isn't high-fantasy fare. It doesn't even fall into the genre. "Play another game," is what I feel, because I don't feel I can recreate that experience for players, not in a high-fantasy game. Not with MMO-inspired classes and rules. Not with the constant focus being on wealth and power accumulation, levels and experience points.

Maybe I will get over this feeling, but then again, something primal calls to me. Something that feels real, in the silly way pen-and-paper games try to model reality. Something where survival is the real measure of heroism and achievement, where facing incredible odds and living to tell the tale is the stuff of legends.

It's just one of those movies that makes you think, and it puts a lot of fantasy gaming assumptions under the harsh spotlight of "why is this fun?" Or more importantly "what do I feel is fun for me?"

Amazing Pathfinder Humble Bundle

Check this out:

https://www.humblebundle.com/books/paizo-pathfinder-bundle

$354 of Pathfinder books for $15? Granted these are PDF copies, but wow, what a deal. Up the price to $25 and you get a physical copy of the Pathfinder Beginner box AND all these PDFs.

$1 gets you:

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GameMastery Guide
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Digital Beginner Box
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Player Character Folio
• Player Character Folio
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Class Guide
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game GM Screen (digital copy)
• Pathfinder Adventure Path: In Hell's Bright Shadow (Hell’s Rebels: 1 of 6)

$15 gets you the above, plus:

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Magic
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Campaign
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Combat
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary 2    
• Pathfinder Adventure Path: Dance of the Damned (Hell’s Rebels: 3 of 6)
• Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea Poster Map Folio (digital copy)
• Pathfinder Society: Year of the Sky Key Scenario Mega-Pack (with 23 adventures)

Pay more than the average (currently around $17), and you get the above plus:

• Pathfinder Campaign Setting: Inner Sea World Guide
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Strategy Guide
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Bestiary
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Ultimate Equipment
• Pathfinder Society Scenario 7-01: Between the Lines
• Pathfinder Adventure Path: Turn of the Torrent (Hell’s Rebels: 2 of 6) 
• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Advanced Player's Guide

Pay $25, and you get all of the above, plus a physical copy of the excellent:

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Beginner Box (Physical Copy - shipping not included)

Wow. An amazing amount of roleplaying goodness for this cheap of a price with a leading system? If I didn't have all of these already I would be jumping all over this.

Our Pathfinder Game and Hero Lab

We play Pathfinder basically as a best-of-the-best compendium of Hero Lab modules, including:

• Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
• Advanced Player’s Guide
• Ultimate Combat
• Ultimate Magic
• Advanced Class Guide
• Occult Adventures

...with Ultimate Intrigue coming later, or course. The add-on books are kind of spotty, with the following being considered core for us:

• Advanced Race Guide
• Pathfinder Unchained
• Inner Sea Gods
• ...and I want to add Inner Sea Races soon, maybe

These are optional, since they are less-character focused (Campaign, Gamemastery, NPC Codex, and Equipment), or game-changing (Mythic):

• Ultimate Campaign
• Mythic Adventures
• Ultimate Equipment
• NPC Codex
• Gamemastery Guide

Monsters are needed!

• Pathfinder Bestiary 1
• Pathfinder Bestiary 2
• Pathfinder Bestiary 3
• Pathfinder Bestiary 4
• Pathfinder Bestiary 5
• Monster Codex
• I also use Tome of Horrors Complete to throw in unpredictable 3rd party wild-cards
• ...I would like to add Tome of Horrors IV and Advanced Bestiary as well

The following third party spell add-ons are also used, I feel they are must-haves to add extra spell and class options:

• 1001 Spells
• Deep Magic
• Gothic Campaign Compendium

The following two are optional class add-ons, they have some good options but they need some work integrating into everything:

• Secrets of Adventuring
• New Paths Compendium

Everything else is a nice-to-have item, if we have it, great, and it adds color and options. We also use the following worldbooks and adventure design books for extra color:

• Inner Sea World Guide
• Rise of the Drow
• Tome of Adventure Design
• ...I would like to add some of the mega-dungeons as well:
• Rappan Athuk
• The Slumbering Tsar Saga

We add as we go, and the game world morphs and takes on its own shape and form. I like the third-party additions, and they keep things unpredictable and off the standard Paizo railroad tracks - especially the trio of Gothic Campaign Compendium, 1001 Spells, and Deep Magic. These three (yes they have some unbalanced spells) take magic-based classes and give them a really cool and wonderful custom flavor and feeling.

Races are whatever you want, we have this crazy, almost World-of-Warcraft meets Star Wars creature cantina view of races where anything cool you can come up with using race design with the Advanced Race Guide is cool with us. Our Jade Regent game seen races derived from the Zodiac populating those lands, so we have ratlings, snakemen, rooster/birdmen, dragonmen, and all sorts of other crazy animal-hybrids populating those lands. Why? Just for fun, and the adventure path never laid out what was there so we ran with it. Race design is cool, and while it leads to some crazy races and combos, it is very cool and lets all sorts of strange characters appear in our games. A top-hat wearing bear-man investigator of crimes committed by undead with a crab-man kung-fu monk sidekick?

Go for it. Have fun. Do not take yourself seriously. But...please take the rules and playing seriously.

And this list never stays really the same for long. If something new comes out, we collect it, and figure out a place for it. Once you accept the throy and fun of modding, and open yourself up to the possibilities, you begin to see the strength of an open system such as Pathfinder and all of the crazy, wonderful, and insane creations you can build with all of these books. This openness, plus a desire to let player's imaginations go, is what makes the game special for our group, and keeps us playing despite other games being out there and waiting for our attention.

Pathfinder as Skyrim

This to me sums up my feelings about Pathfinder and its current state nicely. Having modded Skyrim with over 230 mods, creating merge patches, bash patches, leveled lists, and all sort of other techo-wizardry, I have my custom version of Skyrim running well with all sorts of lovable insanity happening on the roads and wilds of this maniac world, with unpredictable chaos happening around every bend and strange dungeons in places one would never expect. There is also the enemy of survival against the bitter cold, where a lack of preparation against the elements can kill you just as easily as a unique and named draugr in a crypt somewhere.

It is also a finely tuned custom game, with over a year and eighteen versions tested and improved upon, there are mods we like and those we don't, some that are heavy and others that are not, and lots of tweaks and settings to get it working just the way we like things. Modding Skyrim is a hobby for us, much like one would take up model railroading, and the results are satisfying and tragically chaotic and wonderful as we get hours of enjoyment out of that game.

I should say yes, we are looking forward to Fallout 4 and the mods there. We have a similarly modded version of Fallout 3 we have yet to explore, so we have plenty to play with and we are patient. I do look forward to the modding community of Fallout 4 and eagerly await the wonderful pieces they put together there for us to assemble and use in our mod collections.

Pathfinder is the same way for us. Heavily modified with books like 1001 Spells, Deep Magic, and other class compendiums (supported by the wonderful Hero Builder program) it is a big-tent game with options we would never, ever get to explore in a thousand lifetimes, but they are all there for us to enjoy and wander through. Books like Rise of the Drow, third party mega-dungeons, and others make our world a unique place, not exactly how Paizo ships it, but recognizable enough on the surface, much like Skyrim's cold and bitter lands when modded and tweaked with new dungeons and environs. Five monster bestiaries, plus many third party ones make our world a dangerous and unique place filled with the unexpected and unknown. It is as heavily tweaked and customized as our Skyrim version, the modding of the pen-and-paper world and its rules systems every bit as carefully crafted as our electronic world.

D&D 5, at this point, feels a bit like Diablo 3 to us. A fun game, but up until this point it is pretty much the same experience as everybody else's world, minus the stories and unique choices every group makes. The starting point is the same, and while yes you can customize, there simply isn't the fun options that out Pathfinder game has been crafted with over the years. Also, like Diablo 3, D&D 5 is a game that you can easily jump into, so there is that 'instant fun' factor that comes into play. Skyrim, like Pathfinder, can be a complicated beast prone to bugs and finicky problems, but once you get it running great, nothing else comes close in options or the random, chaotic world filled with enemies that pull powers and deadly attacks and combos from books players never had the idea they were coming from. Of course, with D&D 5 it is early, and they just released the game's core under the OGL, so time will tell what we have to play with in the future.

With Pathfinder, if it is published somewhere and included in our 'mod mix' it is fair game, so it takes a special player (and referee) to survive and excel in this environment. With this amount of mixed up madness, you can bet there are exploits, but part of the fun is finding the cheese and house-ruling a fix, just as we would come up with a way to make two conflicting Skyrim mods find a way to work together without breaking things. We are mature enough to know if something is really broken that it needs to be fixed or outright ignored, usually the former, but sometimes the latter and we will revisit it in a later version of the game by removing books or option we don't like, just like a pesky Skyrim mod that never seems to play well with others (randomized and increased world spawns and incredibly long load times in Skyrim).

With us, it is not the question of 'which game is better' for us, it is a question of modding and which game is the better hobby for us. Right now, Pathfinder is our modding game of choice. D&D 5 is a good pick-up-and-play game, but then again, so are many of the retro-clones as well, such as Basic Fantasy or Labyrinth Lord. It is about choice for us, really, and part of the hobby of this game is modding and tweaking, which we enjoy just as well as playing.

Rules Design: Say It Once, Keep It Simple

I was working on the next version of SBRPG and doing clean-up work to the document. What struck me were the places where something was said once, restated in a second place, and further expanded upon in an area it shouldn't have been. We have always had a golden rule when designing rules:

Say it Once, and in One Place

If you change it, you don't worry about breaking something else somewhere else. The D&D 3.0 and 3.5 rules felt like they had this problem, especially in the skills, where you had to hunt down special cases in skill descriptions and ruling on what CR applied to what action in skill X given action Y.

When you design, you tend to use your rules document as a collection of ideas. Things get worked out, you start making rulings on different actions, and you come up with mechanical procedures. It is all good, and you need that free-form creativity and room to experiment and do the messy work of game design. You are going to get lots of repetition in a draft rules document because you are working through things.

There is an equally important step after you design, and that is refinement. I wished Paizo would have went more along the direction of their Pathfinder Beginner's Box with that simplification, that boxed set is a really well-designed and streamlined game, and a standout in the entire D&D 3 rules history of presentation and simplification. They took a lot out, and I feel the game runs better as a result.

You don't need that many special cases most of the time. If you eliminate a rule and make it unnecessary, that is just as important as designing a new rule for a new special case - and often it is more important to streamline and simplify. D&D 5 did a bunch of that and the game runs better as a result (it is less options that Pathfinder, but you give some to get some).

Refinement and simplification are excellent ideals, and a step where I feel many rules designers skip. The goal shouldn't be to design rules that cover every little case, with exceptions and one-off rules for a multitude of special cases. It should be for broader rules that cover more situations, and handle many situations with a broader and all-encompassing guideline. Special cases in rules should be seen as places where the base mechanics fail and need to be patched. Ideally, the special case should not exist, and the general case should handle every situation.

Perhaps there isn't a simple way to handle a special case, and you need the special one-off case ruling. Perhaps this is tied to some specific mechanic that you want, so the extra complexity is worth the time. I am just a big believer in elegant and simple core game mechanics, where how something is handled is self-evident and easily discover-able by players. If X works like Y, then Z should follow suit. You shouldn't have to hunt for a special case in a skill description. There shouldn't be long lists of special to-hit modifiers for every conceivable situation. Elegant is simple, and simple is elegant.

Simplicity is Underrated

I picked up my hardcover copy of Basic Fantasy Role-Playing Game 3rd Edition the other day and I am still impressed by this game. The simplicity and streamlined approach just makes me want to play. This is something that game designers, and especially the ones Nintendo and other companies get, the fact a game can have depth, but it must be infinitely easy and simple to get into.

You push the stick around and the guy moves on the screen. You push a button and he jumps. You hold another button down and he picks something up. You let that button go and he throws it. Maybe you have a running move, and possibly a slide after running. That's it.

Past that setup, a million things can happen. The difficulty can be easy or hard. You can combo together moves for advanced strategies. the level determines how you need to use your simple and easy to use collection of powers, but how and when you use them makes the difference between a novice and an expert. This is the beauty of a well-designed Mario game or level. Simplicity, but a wealth of depth in the situations presented to you and how you choose to use your iconic set of powers.

But more is better! Or is more, really better? Does wading through a thousand pages of rules make a game better? I am not convinced, really, and while I love the work and craftsmanship put into games like Pathfinder and others, the simple games keep calling to me. Just because a game fills up a shelf does not mean it is a great game.

We had this problem with Fantasy Flight's Star Wars RPG, we bought all the expansion books, and the game fell apart on us. The expansion classes felt like reshuffles of the original book's iconic classes. Too much was added, and the game sat there. We ended up saying if we just stuck to the original three books we would have probably had a better time with the game. Granted, the original three books are a large enough affair, but at least things worked well, and once you understood one book the rest were just options. The later Star Wars books felt like they added more basic choices without adding depth, and the game felt heavy for us.

Pathfinder feels similar in a way, but later books do add a true sense of depth and options. I admit the game does feel and play better with some of the fixes introduced in the later books as well. Dealing with the game though requires a good knowledge of a library of books, a tablet and PDFs for on-the-go-play, and a lot of time and brainpower to manage.

And then, that copy of Basic Fantasy sits on my table, and those Mario thoughts hit me again. One button to jump. One to run. Another to pick things up. How you use a limited set of abilities is your key to success. The game takes about a minute to toss some dice and build a character, with no computer program needed. You are playing the moment you sit down and the referee beings to describe the room you are in.

The game is simple for both players and referees. Ascending AC. A good set of monsters. Treasure tables. Classic classes. An old-school design more focused on the interaction between the referee and players than the players and the rules. There is not much there compared to other games, but what is there is the good stuff. The best of dungeon-game play.

It's that Mario feeling again.

Yes, I love my big-box rules, and I am bought in and love Pathfinder and other games. I love the options in big-box games. It feels like playing Skyrim with 100's of mods, or even Fallout 4. Anything can happen. I have the freedom to build any character I want. The world is my sandbox, and I do not know what to expect. this is why we play big-box games.

But big-box computer games have their price of requiring a beefy computer to play them in all their glory, and big-box tabletop RPGs need a lot of books and mental effort to get going. Modding Skyrim and getting everything to work together is almost as complicated as game programming. Creating an adventure for a thirty-book system is just as involved, but it is just as rewarding as that finely-tuned set of Skyrim mods.

Part of the appeal of D&D 5 to me was the reset of that complexity. I could have a Pathfinder-like experience with less books. I ended up appreciating Pathfinder's design and richness afterwards, while still appreciating what Wizards did with D&D and that move towards simplicity. In the end, for us at least, we still like the Skyrim style mess and pile of wonderful big-box options that is Pathfinder than we do D&D 5's reboot. It's a good reboot, but one we find in the middle of a bunch of other games and limited time to play them all. It is also a game with a middling complexity for us, so we find ourselves drawn to the simpler games, or the more complex - since the payouts for time to fun feel better with the extremes rather than the middle.

But I have simple moods at other times. Mario games are not Skyrim, yet I still appreciate their simplicity and design. They still call to me, and I still am a fan of that infinite playground mentality. The promise of a few simple pieces adding up to unlimited fun. The promise the game doesn't take all that much effort to get into, and the rewards for playing feel like a big-box game. That sense of accomplishment for having excelled at my creativity with my moves and actions rather than my knowledge of the rules and ability to wade through complexity.

It is that simplicity thing and finding a game that fits that mood for you.